Verisign's domain name grab....

Have you been to www.sdfkasdfweroiuasdfkl.com lately? It and many other non-existant domain names in the .com and .net area now resolve to Verisign's advertising and search engine. Verisign recently turned on a wildcard domain name that answers any .com query that would have a short time ago provided a "Domain Not Found" response.

While inconvenient for web browsers the new "service" can cause even greater problems for e-mail which goes astray and in many cases people may believe they have delivered their email.

When you get sucked into the site you are bound by the terms of service. They state in part that you cannot use the service for any commercial purpose without arranging with Verisign ahead of time. As a business owner does this imply I must make certain that no contractors or employees accidently mis-type a domain and end up at the Verisign site?

Among the other ideas that might be worth pursuing is a class action suit against Verisign for the time taken to prevent people in companies from accessing their site (which would violate the terms of access). There have also been many suggestions of ways in which one might engage IANA, or use financial feedback (withholding all Verisign business) to send them a message. There are also several technological solutions that are being worked by teams to solve the problem but they should not be required and instead Verisign should be made to uphold its fiduciary responsibilities.